Gotham grit meets Euro flair

1/25/09
parks
By Ryan Chatelain

Gotham grit meets Euro flair

Photo credit: Urbanite

By Ryan Chatelain and David Freedlander

(Photo by Jefferson Siegel)
Bicycles streaming in lanes once reserved for cars. Sidewalk seating carved into major traffic thoroughfares, perfect for enjoying a cappuccino. Families frolicking along the waterfront.

It may sound like Europe, but it’s actually the new New York City, a dramatic and pristine departure from the grit that defined city streets for decades. For the past seven years, the Bloomberg administration has been bringing its vision for public spaces to life, one that will profoundly shape the way people live and move about the city.

“I really believe you can measure the health of a city by the vitality of its streets and public spaces,” said Amanda Burden, the city’s planning commissioner. “In the end, that’s what draws people to a city. That’s what makes people fall in love with a city.”

Burden admits she has been inspired by life across the pond. She’s worked to adopt Copenhagen’s emphasis on public spaces, Paris’ penchant for sidewalk cafes and Barcelona’s renewed commitment to its waterfronts. Access to New York’s shorelines was largely limited by port activity, which declined throughout the 1900s.The Bloomberg administration is also working to double bicycle transportation by 2015. A bike-sharing program in Manhattan was launched for five days last July, and the city is aiming to add 1,000 bike racks each year.

And if other recent additions to New York’s streetscape seem familiar – namely bus shelters, shiny newsstands and high-tech public toilets – that’s because the city hired a Spanish design company, Cemusa, to install street furniture. Cemusa also has contracts in dozens of European cities, including Madrid, Spain; Lisbon, Portugal; and Milan, Italy.

In addition, the city is converting an abandoned elevated railroad on the West Side into the High Line park, a project reminiscent of Paris’ Promenade PlantÃ©e.

But opinion is divided over whether this new Big Apple is necessarily a good thing.

“There is a kind of mono-cultural aesthetic that everything is being made too coordinated and the style is this kind of glass and chrome where everything looks like a condo,” said Jeremiah Moss, who runs the blog Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York.

“It’s nice to have a place to sit, but it feels too antithetical to what a city is supposed to be, which is chaotic and organic and wild and hard to tame.”

Some New Yorkers have looked at the changes with a skeptical eye.

“Those seats in the middle and with all the planters — people are going to get run over,” said John Burke, 50, an elevator mechanic who works in the city as he looked at the “Broadway Esplanade” near 34th Street. “I’ll bet they take them out as soon as someone gets run over.”

Burden maintains that the Bloomberg administration is adamant about protecting the city’s character, relying on mixed-use zoning to preserve neighborhoods’ “small-town texture.”

Rob Pirani, director of environmental programs at the Regional Plan Association, an independent planning group, said he applauds Bloomberg’s efforts to create a more pedestrian-friendly city, especially along its waterfronts.

“Urban development is like buying a pair of shoes,” he said. “Most urban redevelopment fits great, feels right, after it’s been worn a little bit. I think that’s certainly true in New York City, where as time goes by, places develop in subtle but important ways that make them part of neighborhood.”
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Gotham grit meets Euro flair

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